Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Twittersphere is erupting with pictures of soybean beginning to crack and emerge. As we finalize #plant18 and start to assess our soybean stands here are a few items to contemplate.
1. Get an accurate stand assessment. We are often drawn to the worst areas of fields and over-blow how bad the overall stand really is. You can go old school and use the tape or hula-hoop method or try a digital approach such as Bean Cam the WSMB funded soybean replant app!

1.Link to the app store for iPhone and iPad
2.Link to the app store for Android

2 .An effective stand is obviously important to maximize soybean seed yield. However the downside yield risk for a sub-par stand is minimal until stands fall below 50,000 plants per acre. The synergy of early planting coupled with breeders adding 3x yield to soybean branches at low populations have effectively reduced the yield penalty for thins stands by 1/2 (Suhre et al. 2014) . Therefore we recommend the following.

References:

Gaspar, A. and S.P. Conley. 2015. Responses of canopy reflectance, light interception and soybean seed yield to replanting sub-optimum stands. Crop Sci.55: 377-385. doi: 10.2135/cropsci2014.03.0200

Suhre, J.J., Weidenbenner, N., ‡Rowntree, S., Wilson, E., S., Naeve, S. Casteel, S.P. Conley, Diers, B., Esker, P., Specht, J., and Davis, V. 2014. Soybean Yield Partitioning Changes Revealed by Genetic Gain and Seeding Rate Interactions. Agron. J. 106:1631–1642.

 Originally posted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.